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iPhone replacing “Xx” with “Fx”

May 22nd, 2009 | 1 Comment | Posted in Gadgets, Mobile

Every time I text my girlfriend, and put two x’s at the end like this:
Xx

My iPhone feels it necessary to replace it with “Fx”
Apparently the software learns what you want after a certain amour of corrections, however after literally hundreds, my iPhone still does it!!

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C# WordPress Wrapper

May 22nd, 2009 | 5 Comments | Posted in Blogging, Geek Speak, Web

Ok, I’ve barely finished this as a stable release, but I thought I’d post this up any way….

A little open source project I’m working on – Joe Blogs.

In a nutshell, it allows easy communication to your WordPress (or other blog) via an xml-rpc interface.

Big thanks to the work by Charles Cook at http://www.xml-rpc.net/

Joe Blogs is currently hosted on CodePlex – http://joeblogs.codeplex.com/

I’ll be posting more info, tutorials, documentation etc… in the coming days and weeks.

Update

See here for usage instructions:
http://www.alexjamesbrown.com/geek/using-joeblogs/

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TinyURL API

May 14th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in API's, Geek Speak

The popular url shortening service, TinyUrl has an API.

This is probably the most simple API I’ve come across:

http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=http://www.alexjamesbrown.com

(obviously, you can replace http://www.alexjamesbrown.com with any URL)

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How To Take Screenshots Of The iPhone

May 14th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in Gadgets, Mobile, iPhone

Ever wondered how they take those screenshot of applications on an iPhone? Simple:

  1. Press and hold the home button
    Press the lock / on / off button on the top.

Below is an image illustrating this a bit better.

iphoneScreenShotHowTo

The image is then stored in your camera roll, and you can get it the same way you get at all the other photos on your iPhone.

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Logitech Pure-Fit Anywhere

May 13th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in Gadgets

I was excited to receive my Logitech Pure-Fi Anywhere today (i bought v1 – v2 includes shielding so you can use the iPhone with it, however, I don’t store a great deal of music on my iPhone)

However, once I’d plugged it in, following the instruction (for a change) it did… nothing.
No lights lit up, as the instructions told me they would do. i resigned to the fact, it was faulty.

After Googling, I found a number of other people had the same issue.
Their advice, was to adjust 2 pins, at the bottom of the plug (before plugging in the country specific adapter)

I’ve included a picture below to illustrate (sorry for the shoddy image, an iPhone isn’t famed for it’s camera quality)

plug

Simply bending these pins downwards (towards the cable) very slightly, seems to give it a better connection.

I can’t see this being a requirement very often – only if you change the plug all the time.

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Hotel Floris Avenue, Brussels

May 11th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in API's, Databases

Outside the Eurostar Thalys Terminus station in Brussels you will find an organized queue for taxis, (complete with taxi marshal)
We were allocated our taxi, and I presented the driver with a sheet of paper with the hotels address printed on it.
After some consideration, he said it would be 10 Euros, but that it’s only a 10 minute walk from the station.
We opted for the taxi, since I didn’t have a clue where I was going.
Yes, I could of used my iPhone to get us there, with a little help from Google maps, but the charges for data, even in the EU. Put me off.

The day we arrived in Brussels (10th May) there was some special festival, so there were many people out in the streets.

We pulled up outside the hotel around 5 minutes after we left the station (it really would be a 10 Minute walk)
First Impressions were good – hotel is nicely presented, clean and well lit.

Checking in, I noticed that you could buy Internet connection for 10 Euros for 24 hours (which is what I’m using to write this post!)

We were given room 304.

Room

Room was very clean, large, and spacious, with modern decor.
The bathroom was brilliant, had a bath, with shower.
The shower was extremely powerful, lots of pressure, which I like.
One thing that we noted – no soap was left for us on arrival but we did get it on day 2)

The bed, although advertised as a double, was actually two singles pushed together, but this did not matter. Was very comfortable.

We had a TV, with a type of Freeview box that allowed us to get BBC1 and BBC2.

Gym

The hotel was equipped with a “fitness room”
This was a little disappointing – not because there was not much equipment (there isn’t really room) but because none of it worked.
There is:
A treadmill
A cross trainer
A bike
A multigym – Lat pull down, leg extension, pec-dec etc.

This would of been adequate for our 2 night stay, however most of the equipment did not work.
The multigym had come off its pulley system, the treadmill was missing its safety key, the bike, didn’t move. The only thing working was the cross trainer.

Breakfast

Breakfast was served on level -1
Consisted of cereal, ham, cheese, fruit, pastries (croissants etc..) cooked sausages, bacon, eggs.
All in all, was very nice.

Location

The hotel is brilliantly located. Just a few minutes walk from Great Market Square and many shops.
Directly opposite the hotel was a supermarket, where we bought some things for the room, since the mini-bar was hideously expensive – ?3 for a can of coke!!

 Useful links

Official Site: http://www.hotelflorisavenue.com
Hotel Chain: http://www.florishotels.com
Trip Advisor: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g188644-d344865-Reviews-Floris_Avenue_Hotel-Brussels.html

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String.EndsWithAny and StartsWithAny Extension Method

May 8th, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in Uncategorized

It frustrated me that while String provides the StartsWith and EndWith method, it doesn’t provide an EndWithAny. So, if I wanted to see if a particular string started or ended with any specified string, I would have to create my own method to return a true or false.
Whilst this is fine, it’s a little clunky if I want to use it in various places in my application.

For this reason, I decided to create an extension method:

EndsWithAny

public static bool EndsWithAny(this string input, params char[] endings)
{
	foreach (var x in endings)
		if (input.EndsWith(x.ToString()))
			return true;

	return false;
}

The method is very similar for StartsWithAny:

public static bool StartsWithAny(this string input, params char[] beginnings)
{
	foreach (var x in beginnings)
		if (input.StartsWith(x.ToString()))
			return true;

	return false;
}

I’ll write up a post on Extension Methods as soon as I get a chance.

For now, the MSDN one may help….

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Iphone Screen Cracked!!

May 3rd, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in Gadgets, Hardware

I have had my for around 4 weeks now.

I was shopping in Guildford, and took the phone out of my pocket, and noticed the screen had cracked all the way from top – bottom!

I knew for a fact that I hadn’t dropped the device, and that it had not received any

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Base checksum mismatch – A solution for TortoiseSVN users.

May 1st, 2009 | No Comments | Posted in Development, Geek Speak, Version Control

I recently had the misfortune to get a Base Checksum Mismatch error, when I tried to check in files to my repository.
The problem occurs when the files svn data has become corrupted.
There are many solutions to this problem, but here’s how I solved it simply (I only had 2 files that had this error)

  1. Check in everything except the files that are causing the issue.
  2. Take a fresh checkout to a separate directory
    (right click in a directory -> SVN Checkout)
    Screen should look like the image below:

    image

  3. After TortoiseSVN has checked out everything to the new directory, simply copy across your files that were giving you trouble
  4. Check back in.

That’s how I fixed it.
Hope this helps!

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